Football Registers 140 in 9th Annual Be The Match Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive
BETHLEHEM, Pa. --- The Moravian College football team held its 9th Annual Be The Match Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive on Wednesday, April 18 in Johnston Hall, and the Greyhounds signed up 140 people this year.
BETHLEHEM, Pa. --- The Moravian College football team held its 9th Annual Be The Match Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive on Wednesday, April 18 in Johnston Hall, and the Greyhounds signed up 140 people this year.
The Moravian football squad has joined Villanova University Head Football Coach Andy Talley and Be The Match® for the ninth consecutive spring to help save lives by recruiting potential marrow donors. The Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation has had the support of 81 football programs around the country and added over 84,000 donors and accounted for 489 transplants. https://www.talleybonemarrow.org/
Every three minutes someone is diagnosed with a life-threatening blood cancer. More than 14,000 patients don't have a matching marrow donor within their family. They depend on Be The Match to help find someone to give them hope for a cure.
The Get in the Game. Save A Life. Program raises awareness of this need and invites students, faculty, staff and the community to join the Be The Match Registry. To sign up as a committed registry member, people need to meet age and health guidelines and be willing to donate to any patient in need. Registration involves completing a health history form and giving a swab of cheek cells. Those of diverse racial or ethnic heritage are especially needed. Donors and patients who share the same ancestry are mostly likely to match.
This is a ten-minute process that includes filling out a medical history form and a painless cotton swabbing of the cheek. Moravian has had at least six people that have registered at previous registration drive been selected as matches and going through the process to donate bone marrow.
Since starting the drive in 2010, Moravian has brought 1,670 people into the registration process with 1,428 becoming part of the full registry program, a number that will increase after the 140 from 2018's drive are fully vetted by the Be The Match organization. The Greyhounds have 77 potential matches out of that group with nine going through with the full donation process. The national average is 1 in 430 people being a donor while Moravian's average is at 1 in 159.
To view a photo gallery from the registration drive, visit http://moraviansports.com/general/2017-18/photos/0021/index.
